This is a great book about the moronic underpinnings of motivational speaking

Bright-sidedHow the Relentless Promotion of PositiveThinking Has Undermined America

by Barbara Ehrenreich

A sharp-witted knockdown of America’s love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realism

Americans are a “positive” people—cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat: this is our reputation as well as our self-image. But more than a temperament, being positive, we are told, is the key to success and prosperity.

In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude. Evangelical mega-churches preach the good news that you only have to want something to get it, because God wants to “prosper” you. The medical profession prescribes positive thinking for its presumed health benefits. Academia has made room for new departments of “positive psychology” and the “science of happiness.” Nowhere, though, has bright-siding taken firmer root than within the business community, where, as Ehrenreich shows, the refusal even to consider negative outcomes—like mortgage defaults—contributed directly to the current economic crisis.

With the mythbusting powers for which she is acclaimed, Ehrenreich exposes the downside of America’s penchant for positive thinking: On a personal level, it leads to self-blame and a morbid preoccupation with stamping out “negative” thoughts. On a national level, it’s brought us an era of irrational optimism resulting in disaster. This is Ehrenreich at her provocative best—poking holes in conventional wisdom and faux science, and ending with a call for existential clarity and courage.

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Bratislava as it was up to the 1960s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=YEfgueY172g#t=332sHistory of Bratislava - Pozsony - Presporok - PressburgBratislava
City capital of Slovakia. Settled first by Celts and Romans. As Pressburg, it developed as a trade centre and became a free royal town in 1291. The first university in what was then Hungary was founded there in 1467. The city served as the Hungarian capital (1541 – 1784) and was the seat of the Diet (parliament) until 1848. The Treaty of Pressburg (1805) was signed here by Napoleon and Francis II following the Battle of Austerlitz. After World War I, on the formation of Czechoslovakia, it became capital of the province of Slovakia, and it became the national capital on Slovakia's independence in 1992.
Bratislava is an important road and rail center and a leading Danubian port. A well-diversified industry produces textiles, chemicals, and metal goods; during the Communist period, heavy industry was focused on the production of armaments.

Forests, vineyards, and large farms surround the city, which has an active trade in agricultural products. It is also a popular tourist center. A Roman outpost called Posonium by the 1st cent. A.D., Bratislava became a stronghold of the Great Moravian Empire in the 9th cent. After the death of Ottocar II (1278), Bratislava and much of S and E Slovakia fell under Hungarian rule. From 1541, when the Turks captured Buda, until 1784, Bratislava served as Hungary's capital and the residence of Hungarian kings and archbishops.

The kings continued to be crowned there until 1835, and Bratislava was the meeting place of the Hungarian diet until 1848. Inhabited largely by German traders before the 19th cent., the city then became predominantly Magyar. In the 19th cent. it was the center of the emerging Slovak national revival, and after the union of the Czech and Slovak territories in 1918 it was incorporated into Czechoslovakia. From 1939 until 1945, Bratislava was the capital of a nominally independent Slovak republic that was governed by a fascistic pro-German regime responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of Czechs and Jews. The Univ. of Jan Comenius (1919), the Slovak Academy of Sciences, a polytechnic university, a national theater, and several museums are in the city. The 9th-century castle, above the Danube, was rebuilt in the 13th cent. St. Martin's Cathedral, the Franciscan convent and church, and the old town hall are also 13th-century buildings. The new town hall occupies an 18th-century palace, formerly the residence of the primates of Hungary; the Treaty of Pressburg was signed there in 1805.

About this Blog

Decided to start a Blog about Bratislava, and the politics of the country because most of the blogs about Slovakia and Bratislava in english were either brief entries from travellers passing through Bratislava with no idea about the place and commented largely about beer and other "vital issues" like that, or the more serious ones usually run by moronic americans preaching their judaeo-christian hyper-religious extreme-pro-capitalist & oligopolistic anti-democratic religion coupled with their famed grasp of geography.

There are also some Brits that have a slightly better grasp of geography than their US cousins. However brits are largely trying to recreate colonial glories and their grasp of facts in Bratislava tends to be confused even at the BBC. Most of the experiences the brits have are from lager-lout type pissups in Bratislava and use that crap movie "Hostel" as their intellectual compass.

This blog aspires to discuss serious matters with humour and no-nonsense analysis. Its unapologetically intellectual and refuses to allow this term to be ascribed with a negative meaning the way that the word liberal has become negative in the US.

Clearly there is much love about this great city and country, but without pandering to any special interests or prejudices.

Comments are welcome and will never be deleted or blocked if they offer a contrarian view.

About the bear in the picture.
Macko Usko is a bear with a floppy ear, who is a celebrity in Slovakia and the mountains behind him (Tatra) offer the best skiing after the alps. Macko has attitude and is an opinionated bear as you can see.